


the beast in the stacks

by tigrrmilk



Category: Neverwhere - Neil Gaiman
Genre: Libraries, beasts - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-20
Updated: 2012-12-20
Packaged: 2017-11-21 18:13:52
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,971
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/600690
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tigrrmilk/pseuds/tigrrmilk
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Marquis didn’t tell Richard, but he remembered Hunter, once.</p>
<p>She’d told him about fighting a beast in the stacks beneath some long-lost city.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the beast in the stacks

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lmeden](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lmeden/gifts).



Richard felt his shin creak as he hurried after the Marquis through St Mary’s. There were sleeping bags everywhere, and lamps, and patches of damp.

He’d been trying to get the Marquis to listen all day and he wasn’t sure why he’d even tagged along.

He wasn’t going to listen.

The Marquis lifted his torch up and peered at all of the bags, which seemed to crumble in direct light. There was nobody there.

“I just want to know what you heard,” Richard started again, and twisted at the string around his neck. The Marquis hissed back and Richard guessed that meant, _silence_.

“There’s nobody here,” Richard said after a minute, pained and tired.

The Marquis shone the torch at him, scowling. But then a heap of rolled-up sleeping bags in the corner began to sit up, and once again Richard lost out to somebody with a favour to give back, grudgingly, in kind.

They settled down to eat a stew with the man (more blanket than person) - “don’t stare, and stop eating before you’re full,” was all the Marquis had said before they set off, and he hadn’t added anything more once they got there.

So Richard just looked down at his bowl and stopped eating when it was half-empty. He didn’t understand what they talked about particularly well - some books, maybe - but when he and the Marquis emerged in the grotty cinema on Mile End Road with a small clutch of papers, he felt the excitement that was bubbling up in the Marquis before he even spoke.

The sky over Stepney was a tired orange. 

London Above stretched out and gathered itself in for the night.

“This is it,” the Marquis said, and shuffled the papers then produced from their midst a thin card carved out of wood. The word _Library_ was embossed on it in gold leaf that was starting to peel.

“This is it?” he said. 

 

~ ~ ~

 

The Marquis didn’t tell Richard, but he remembered Hunter, once.

She’d told him about fighting a beast in the stacks beneath some long-lost city. 

(Evonium, Troy. Ys?)

Or had he heard it from somebody else? Was it one of the stories?

Someone else had probably had the temerity to write it all down afterwards. If anybody else knew.

People thought they knew a lot more than they did. But maybe someone _had_ written something down and he’d be able to remember more of it.

Not that that was why he cared, of course.

 

~ ~ ~

 

A long time ago, Hunter turns as a nose-knife snuffles through the books to reach her.

It’s dark and she can barely smell its sweat through all of the moulding pages.

The beast’s nose and feet press holes through the books and tear their spines. Hunter knows when to move but isn’t sure, yet, how she knew. And she is afraid. And she knows that this is what has to happen, first

The flames the beast snort are the only source of light.

On the other side of the library, a clerk writes in the margins of the poem she has spent the last few weeks copying out. She writes in the dark and she writes through the blasts of fire. She knows she’s not the target and she knows she can’t leave.

Hunter hasn’t seen the clerk’s face, but there is always somebody behind every beast. Or is it, they only become catacombs when there are bodies there. These stacks feel like gaps between tombs. Another volume says its last rites and sees its guts spilling.

Hunter can barely remember how this started. Hunter hesitates for a second too long and takes a nose in the shoulder. But it’s what she needs - a grunt and heave and the beast is impaled from the other side of the shelf. But the books nearest the body catch fire.

And Hunter has to run. The clerk knows there is nowhere to go but Hunter made sure she left the door open.

(it is very damp down here, hundreds of years after the library Above died its last death if it’s been a day; Hunter wonders how it has finally caught fire)

The clerk knows that a dead beast is a cold beast.

Her breath would come in clouds if she could see it.

Hunter can’t see her, but she leaves the door open. 

They say that the clerk will one day find it, and so will the last of the books.

 

~ ~ ~

 

Most of the books that people lose aren’t Lost Books.

“Door said it had gone east last she heard of it,” The Marquis said, as he hoisted himself up and out of a grate into the hot July rain of London Above. 

Richard took the hand he put out (and barely had to consider whether it was a trick before he decided he didn’t really care) and pulled himself up after him. “The card turning up at St Mary’s makes me think it’s still about here somewhere.”

“It moves?” Richard blinked and put his hands above his eyes to keep the rain away. “Do we have any idea what we’re looking for?”  
  
“Of course it moves,” The Marquis said. 

“Silly me. Couldn’t we just go down and ask?” Richard said.

The Marquis looked at him as if he’d never heard anything as stupid in his life. 

“He only gave me the card cos he had too. Here -

He turned the card around and gave it to Richard. It was a strange, long thing - no magnetic strip or phone number, just -

_Oh_. On the back, in black ink, it said _Dick Mayo_.

“Is this supposed to be my name?” Richard said, after staring at it for a minute, “cos it sounds like a pretty terrible slur to me.”

“It sounds the same,” The Marquis said. “In... certain accents.”

 

~ ~ ~

 

“If you can’t find the library,” Door said, rubbing one of her eyes with the back of her hand, “then you have to offer up a tribute and it’ll find you. As long as you have the card.”

Earlier on, when they gave up as the sun set over Bethnal Green, he’d asked the Marquis why this library was so important. “Because I want to –”

“– maps,” was the reply. 

Door’s sister was still missing. She’d done a tour of dead European kingdoms and visited a few places further afield – but no trace.

Richard had looked down at his feet. He’d wondered what else the library had, but...

He’d pulled at the loose threads in his sleeve.

“I’ve heard people talk,” he’d said, then. “Some strange, horrible things have started... appearing. On the fringes. Like, animals.”

“The birth of the beast,” The Marquis said. “It’s happened... elsewhere. But not in London, not since it was London. Unless everybody’s been holding out on me.”

His smile was wry and unhappy, and the smile of a man who knows that it would be impossible for him to have been deceived for so long.

“I want to find Door’s sister too, but –”

“There’s a lot you need to learn,” The Marquis had said then, and ruffled his hair.

“What sort of a tribute?” Richard said.

 

~ ~ ~

 

**a hurried tribute – an inventory:**

3 copies of Bridget Jones’s Diary;

5 copies of Notes from a Small Island;

2 copies of Wild Swans;

1 copy of A Brief History of Time;

2 copies of Captain Corelli’s Mandolin;

1 copy of Sophie’s World;

7 copies of the most up to date map of the underground;

1 copy of issue 2 of R*E*P*E*A*T;

a plastic bag full of anarchist fanzines; 

1 Gideon Bible;

a bag full of old copies of Melody Maker;

a bag full of religious pamphlets from various religions;

8 books of Peanuts cartoons with the front covers torn off;

a big lock of Richard’s hair;

3 of Richard’s eyelashes;

Richard and The Marquis and Door are to repeat, while holding hands with closed eyes, and please repeat after me:

_I hereby undertake not to mark, deface, or injure in any way, any volume, document or other object belonging to the Library or in its custody; not to bring into the Library, or kindle therein, any fire or flame; and I promise to obey all rules of the Library._

Neither Richard or Door had heard the oath before, but the Marquis had taught it to them. After repeating the oath five times (and God, Richard would have turned his back on it all for the night for just a whiff of beer, a drop of whiskey) they felt their feet shift, and fell to their knees.

“Once more,” The Marquis said, still clutching their hands. Richard’s seemed to be burning through.

And they bowed their heads and said it again.

 

~ ~ ~

 

“The fuck is this?” The Librarian said, angrily looking at the copies of Captain Corelli’s Mandolin. “I’ve already read this one, and it’s shit.”

Richard found it hard not to stare at The Librarian. He was wearing a big cardigan and thick glasses, and a strange outfit underneath - some priest’s robes were in there, and chunky brogues. He looked like he’d fallen into the dressing room for the cast of a cheap BBC drama about libraries through the ages.

“Where’s the joy?” The Librarian asked, and rapped his hand on the pamphlets, which were smudgy. His knuckles were very dirty.

“Powles Crosse? Records from the folkmoot, or anything saved from burning?” He flicked through Bridget Jones Diary and stopped talking for a minute, while Richard bit at his thumb.

“NO EATING IN THE LIBRARY,” The Librarian said, once he’d put the book back down. Richard stopped chewing his hand.

“Very interesting. Yes, yes, I have to let you in, but,” and he sighed. “I remember when they used to burn books like these,” he said, a little sadly. “Where’s the danger?”

He asked Richard to sign his name on a heavy scroll of paper, and took his library card off him, smoothed down the golden lettering, then gave it back again.

Richard decided against asking him to redo his name.

The Librarian took them through a couple of arches (how deep down were they?) and then they arrived at two big doors, locked together.

“Your grandfather helped me install these,” The Librarian said, as Door blinked at them. 

~ ~ ~

 

Most of the books that people lose aren’t Lost Books, but some of them are. The library opens out around them - it feels as big as London above from the doorway, with an underground stream cutting through the middle. To the west there are big marble cases full of books bound in animal skin, fur, black leather. And on the east are wooden shelves, more haphazard - there are pamphlets and sheets of paper slipping down. 

And some of the shelves are scorched and collapsed.

Richard was looking in the old catalogue (20 volumes bound in strange skins on their own shelf in the centre) when The Librarian found him. He had a favour to ask.

“In the stacks,” The Librarian said, “there’s something there. It’s been eating the books.” 

Richard looked up. “I’ve lost all of the other rooms, and all of my clerks,” The Librarian continued. “A long time ago.”

“I’m not sure we can help you,” Richard said. 

“A woman visited, before,” The Librarian said, “One of my rooms in one of the other cities. I still have the door. She maimed it.” 

Richard scratched his neck and looked around for Door, or the Marquis.

“Somebody’s in there,” The Librarian said. “Somebody’s still there.”

He was holding a book that looked like it had been bound and rebound across the centuries, the pages curled and crumbled, pages stuck onto newer pages. He opened it out and stood back and told Richard to read.

“The Hunter is here,” is how the notes in the margin began.


End file.
